A Friendly Chat
by Marching Madly Onward
Summary: Sosuke Aizen has a conversation with Soi Fon that cleaves dangerously close to treason.


**A Friendly Chat**

"Greetings, Captain," Sōsuke Aizen favored Soi Fon with a sloppily ingratiating smile. Of course he would do his best to get on her good side. This was his first time attending a captain's meeting. The haori—the ultimate mark of his rank—was still so crisp and new it practically shone.

She eyed the first arrival with distaste—whether it was a distaste for the man or the fact that he had beaten her to the meeting, who could say, but there was a certain pride in having been the first to arrive at every captain's meeting for the last six years. It said something of professionalism to be so very punctual. Or maybe it was just a matter of disliking a neophyte; he was too new, too raw for her tastes. His promotion smacked less of merit and more of a desperation to fill the gaping holes Urahara had left in their ranks.

"Captain Aizen," Soi Fon inclined her head at the junior officer. She was, in fact, younger than the man in glasses, but she had held her post longer than Sōsuke. While he had spent the better part of a decade toiling away as the acting captain (but actually a Lieutenant) of the Ffith after his Captain Hirako's abduction, she had taken her Captain's betrayal as an opportunity to claw her way to top and eclipse the woman who had shone like a sun in her sky.

She put it from her mind.

She realized he had been babbling about the weather and other such nauseatingly mundane things. She was early, but her time was precious.

"Is there anything you have to tell me?" Her face remained marvelously impassive.

"Not…precisely," he started. "Rather, I have a question for you."

Her sustained stare was her way of telling him to continue.

"How do you do it?"

"Do what?" She said a touch hotly. She didn't care for guessing games.

"This," he smiled ruefully, sweeping his arm out and around at anything, everything. "How are you able to go on being a captain? How do you keep your head above water? It all feels like so much sometimes."

She squared her shoulders, nostrils flaring. She had no great faith in Aizen, but she hadn't taken him for a whiner.

"We do it because no one else can," she said. "What would befall Soul Society if we weren't willing to take it upon our shoulders?"

"So, you're driven by a sense of fatalism, then? We do it because we must?"

"We do it because we are the only ones with the wherewithal," she narrowed her eyes meaningfully; he may not have had the wherewithal after all.

"Is it something we're born with?" He wasn't looking at her. He hadn't for some time, but now it smacked less of skittishness and more of condescension. Did he believe he was talking over her head?

The thought rankled her.

"What do you really want to know, Captain Aizen? You seem to have something in mind."

He finally faced her, looking her right in the eye.

"Do you hate her?"

Soi Fon felt her tendons go taut. She willed it away.

"You have no right—"

"Do you hate the system that bore her?" He was driving at something now. Had she spent the time studying it, she might have likened him to a shark, quick and merciless cutting through the waves just below the surface. "Do you hate the idea that we're all born into something, that we can't ever strive and achieve in spite of our humble origins? That's what it sounds like, and it makes you sound like a noble's mouthpiece. Even though you came from a mere 'hanger-on house' and sit in the seat normally reserved for a Shihōin. It doesn't suit you."

She studied him very closely, deliberately not reaching for _Suzumebachi _slung across her back. That he spoke so freely about, as if he knew her, was insulting enough. That he was flirting with subversive ideas was dangerous. Just like her. She had already plotted out four ways to kill him if this conversation went down the wrong path.

"Who are you to say what does and doesn't suit me?"

"You're right," he nodded in contrition that didn't feel so contrite. "I don't know much about you, but I'm trying to change that now. It's only right that coworkers learn to get along, isn't it?"

He bloomed into a beatific smile, the same smile that won the hearts and minds of so many in the Fifth. That was what made him a Captain—not any particular feat of strength or sense of tactical acumen. It was his charisma, his ability to inspire hope in anyone and everyone.

He wouldn't have lasted a day in the Second. The Second, minted in fear, carved from flesh and poised like a guillotine. The Second, where you were just as likely to cut down your fellow as a Hollow.

"You have a terrible way of going about it," she said in dismissal. "This isn't the time or the place for fraternization."

He should have taken the hint. He didn't.

"You didn't answer my question," he said gently. "You wear your role very well, but is it the kind of thing you really wanted to wear? Do you hate the idea of living in her shadow simply because she was born to a higher caste? Don't you hate them for forcing it on you? Don't you hate a world that allows it to happen this way?"

She was not angry. The officers of the Second did not get angry.

She was livid.

"Hold your tongue, Captain, or I will hold it for you," she glared daggers deadlier than her _shikai_. "It is not your place to question me, my past or my station. It is no one's place to question the founding principles of the Soul Society. " She paused for emphasis. "Surely you've heard of the Maggot's Nest."

"Oh," he flinched. "I didn't mean to…strike a nerve. I have no grievances with the system that affords us such wondrous opportunities. Just look at my own Lieutenant—a humble boy from Rukongai allowed to achieve his rank in record time. But I…can see how you might have seen it another way. No, it was nothing like that. I simply enjoy fostering healthy debate. Why be content with our reality when we can envision something greater?"

She didn't believe that, not for a moment, but now really wasn't the time to press the matter.

She put Aizen from her mind long enough to greet the Captain-Commander and Captain Unohana, who came bearing down the hall in an telltale swell of spiritual power. All else was put aside in the name of deference and propriety, even the junior Captain's idiotic babble.

She would broach this subject with him again, not out of any desire to hear what he had to say and not because she agreed. Oh, yes, she had her resentments, but it was not at the system. Her grief lay with a particular person, and when she went to the Fifth Division the next day, Sōsuke understood that.

He was really very sorry to have tried to confuse the issue, not that he was actually trying to confuse anyone, you see. Oh, he really hadn't meant to offend her. Maybe his philosophical meanderings were better saved for Captain Kyōraku, who liked to wax faux-cerebral when he was sufficiently lubricated. It had been enough to impress the indolent captain.

So, no, he hadn't meant anything by it. In fact, he was polite enough to wish her well in her ongoing search for her wayward mentor and her co-conspirator from the Twelfth Division, and he assured her she had the full resources of the Fifth at her disposal in that search.

She scoffed at the thought. There was nothing his subordinates could do that hers could not.

Soi Fon left the Fifth Division barracks confident in the belief that Sōsuke Aizen was a bumbling greenhorn who tried far too hard to impress his superiors. She had more important things to investigate, like the outlaw Kisuke Urahara.

"What was that about?" Lieutenant Gin Ichimaru asked as he plopped himself down with a bowl of dried persimmons in one hand and a jaunty wave toward the retreating Captain Soi Fon with the other.

"I was just steering a busy little bee in the right direction."


End file.
